{"id":11384,"date":"2025-03-03T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11384"},"modified":"2025-03-02T23:11:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T06:11:45","slug":"ripples-in-the-gift-card-resale-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/03\/ripples-in-the-gift-card-resale-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripples in the Gift Card Resale Market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The biggest volume gift card reselling platform Raise&#8217;s GCX, which incidentally via a broker is where most manufactured spender&#8217;s gift cards end up, recently made moves that seem to effectively push all but the top three or four sellers into insolvency unless they have a stable of private buyers or a mostly non-existent big alternative. Based on discussions with several anonymous brokers, the new normal is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>New tiers (that sound like Delta status levels) based on quarterly sales volume:\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&lt;= $19,999 for Bronze<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$20,000+ for Silver<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$100,000+ for Gold<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$500,000+ for Platinum<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$1,000,000+ for Diamond<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>$10,000,000+ for <s>Delta 360<\/s> Diamond Plus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Platform selling fees ranging based on tier level from 15% to 6%-ish (that means if you sell <a href=\"https:\/\/gcx.raise.com\/buy-best-buy-gift-cards\">BestBuy at 98.50% of face<\/a>, you&#8217;ll take-home 83.5% after fees as a Bronze member, maybe up to 45 days later)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Penalties for cards that don&#8217;t sell quickly enough<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Increased penalties for debited transactions (when a buyer says the card doesn&#8217;t work)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No more grace period for bad quarters, immediate tier demotion<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Longer holding times before payout for many gift cards<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to sell on Raise \/ GCX and compete with the big three current sellers that are paying approximately 6-7% in fees, you&#8217;re going to have pay around $40,000 in extra commissions on your way to that tier too. That means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Raise&#8217;s changes are forming an oligopoly of gift card resellers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Smaller resellers are going to drop out (I&#8217;ve heard of three already)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The bar to entry to be an effective bulk competitor is higher than ever<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Competition for manufactured spenders selling gift cards to brokers will fall<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Manufactured spenders will see decreased profits as competition falls<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The existing oligopoly will see increased profits as competition falls<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Raise is likely to have a simpler business and a smaller support staff with these changes, but they&#8217;re also leaving themselves vulnerable to a new marketplace competitor with lower fees and a penchant for marketing that could take over as the new de-facto gift card resale platform. Watch for turbulent times in the short term, and (hopefully) a new reseller focused marketplace in the medium term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, and since we haven&#8217;t talked about Pepper for a while, let&#8217;s take a tangent from the main topic to mention Pepper&#8217;s weekend: they were offering 20% back in Pepper Coins for Best Buy purchases, and 25% back for Target purchases. Completely auspicious right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"797\" height=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l960.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11385\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l960.jpg 797w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l960-300x139.jpg 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l960-768x356.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">GCX\/Raise&#8217;s totally original status program elite bag tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The biggest volume gift card reselling platform Raise&#8217;s GCX, which incidentally via a broker is where most manufactured spender&#8217;s gift cards end up, recently made<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11384"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11396,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11384\/revisions\/11396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}